GOOD WORKSLawyers giving backHow Hal BartholomewGot a Namesake Park …… Even though the Elk Grove family law attorney is very much alive and well

BY JUNE D. BELL
Hal Bartholomew has played slow-pitch softball
for decades, but he has yet to step up to bat at the
Elk Grove park named in his honor. The family law
attorney vows to remedy that soon, on a summer
evening when dusk comes late.

Not that daylight is required to enjoy the HalBartholomew Sports Park. Many fields on its 46acres are lighted, allowing lacrosse, soccer, football,tennis and softball players to practice and competeafter dark, year-round. “It offers so much,” saysBartholomew, of Bartholomew & Wasznicky in Sac-ramento, whose team happens to play at a differentpark. “It’s a very well-done park, quite frankly. WhichThough parks and civic buildings are typicallynamed after deceased local luminaries, Elk Grove,a southeastern suburb of Sacramento, does thingsdifferently. In fact, it was Bartholomew, 70, whosuggested decades ago that the Elk Grove Parks andRecreation Board, on which he served for 18 years,start naming green spaces for residents active in thecommunity. The board agreed, and a tradition began.

“Why do we honor people when it’s too late forthem to realize it?” Bartholomew reasons. “Ourpark dedications really became celebrations, be-cause we’d have a ceremony, and then we’d havea barbecue, so people who knew the family wouldcome out. The families thought it was really cool.”But he never expected a park to be named forhim. When Bartholomew joined the board (nowcalled the Cosumnes Community Services District)

in the mid-1970s, he was just following the lead
of his father, Alvin, who had served on the sewer
board, school board and various church committees. “I grew up in an environment where you
helped out in the community,” Bartholomew says.

“That was part of life.”In the mid-’70s, the town’s only park was aregional site run by the county. But the board keptan eye toward the future, stockpiling more than 50green spaces during his tenure.

“We grabbed the land whenever we could,
because we never could have been able to afford
it otherwise,” he says. The board paid less than
$23,000 per acre for land that later commanded
more than five times that amount. But with a limited
budget, the park district had to adopt a buy-and-hold
strategy. Ground for the Hal Bartholomew Sports
Park was purchased in the 1990s, but the park didn’t
open until 2010. Bartholomew’s four fellow board
members surprised him at his 1994 retirement dinner
by announcing their plan to name the park for him.

During his time on the board, Bartholomew oftendrew on his skills as a mediator in family law mat-ters. “I made sure everybody was heard so they feltthey were participating in the decision,” he says.

He didn’t set out to specialize in family law, but
it grew on him when he took over a colleague’s
practice at the firm where they worked, after she
moved on to become a judge. “I discovered that
divorce and family law is really a business practice,
which is what I wanted to do,” he says, noting it
encompasses real estate and corporate law.